Agents or nodes that participate in performance of a task, whether the agents or nodes are autonomous devices or human-controlled devices relying on automated control systems, may seek to dynamically coordinate their movements and positions to aid in the collective performance of the task. There are myriad examples of systems in which agents manually coordinate their movements to act in harmony with a group of similarly-situated agents. To take just one example, in landing at commercial airports, pilots rely on instructions from air traffic control to provide a course that allows the aircraft to land while providing a reasonable safety margin between the aircraft and other aircraft in the same airspace.
The coordination task of landing the aircraft is complex. In coordinating the approach and landing of aircraft, what constitutes a reasonable safety margin may depend on the types of aircraft in the airspace and how the aerodynamics of each type of aircraft affects nearby aircraft. Changing atmospheric and visibility conditions affect what constitutes a safe margin between aircraft. Variance in numbers of aircraft entering the airspace and the approach vectors the aircraft use to enter the airspace constantly changes the conditions. As soon as a plan has been established for coordinating the approach landing of the aircraft, additional aircraft may enter the airspace and the added aircraft may change the prior plan. Furthermore, unexpected events may occur, such as a runway being closed, that would involve altering the original plan. Notwithstanding the coordination problems to be resolved, operators of all aircraft in the airspace desire landing as soon as possible to save fuel and to meet schedules so that cargo can be routed on time and so that passengers can make connections.
With coordinating the approach and landing of aircraft as just one example of the difficulty in coordinating complex group operations, it would be desirable to automate processes to coordinate movement of vehicles and analogous coordinated deployments. Furthermore, it would be desirable to identify a robust system for dynamically coordinating deployments and movements of a plurality of nodes in a manner that is reliable, adaptable, and capable of being distributed.